In article <uos18o$1vil8$1@dont-email.me>,
David Duffy <davidd02@tpg.com.au> wrote:

James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

Five SFF Works Featuring Noble Lies and Useful Prevarications

"Telling the truth can be dangerous business
Honest and popular don't go hand in hand"

so why not lie?

Vonnegut in _Cat's Cradle_

"I know how you feel, Jack. Tim is even more of a formalist
about the regs than you are, though in his position it suits
him better. But evidently Hart was out of the office when
Sylvia showed up with her historian-photographer's ticket,
and persuaded Tim that this also entitled her to that
Department cachet as recorder for the expedition. Tim
couldn't find anything in the rules against it, I suppose;
or, more likely, he was even more rushed than usual and
didn't have time to make a proper search of the rules, for
there are a couple of clear precedents against it. Anyhow,
he issued it to her. And that makes her responsible for
three very large gray smudges on the records of three
unusually able cadets."

Sandbag brightened visibly.

"Stow that," Langer said sharply. "Nobody doubts your
ability, Jerry, or you wouldn't be here. Your judgment,
however, is no better in my eyes than it was two minutes
ago."

"Yes, sir."

"But what did you do, sir?" Jack ventured.

"I took refuge in the probable illegality of the cachet.
It was all I could do on short notice. I also told her that
I already had two pups to cope with and didn't want to take
on a third even if I had room for her; and that in view of
the way she had marred your records, and Tim's, she had
better go home before she did more serious damage."

Sandbag suppressed a grin barely in time.

"Well, it was funny. But we haven't heard the last of it.
Her parting shot was, 'My father was right after all.' What
she means by that, I haven't the least idea, but I don't
at all like the sound of it."

"Sir--" Jack said.

"Go ahead. Rest, gentlemen; the riot act is over. Just bear
in mind that I meant it. If you have any comments, I'd
welcome them."

Jack relaxed, though, not entirely, with a grateful sigh.

"Sir, I don't know what she means either, but I have a few
notions. Wasn't it Shakespeare who said that hell hath no
fury like a woman scorned? And when that woman is also a
reporter for Earth's largest press association--"

"Yes; she could do a lot of damage," Langer agreed gravely.
"There's where I wish Tim Bearing had told her a couple of
great fat lies, instead of sticking so closely to the book.
He could have saved us a lot of trouble. But that, of course,
is why Tim is a cadet."

Jack frowned. He tried to follow Langer's logic, but there
seemed to be no connection between the two lines of thought.
"He's a cadet because he didn't lie to her?"

"Yes, Jack. As the Secretary remarked when he was discussing
Lucifer, no intelligent being can afford to tell the truth
all the time. Yet we do try to teach youngsters that honesty
is the best policy, and mostly it is--especially when it
comes to evading laws and regulations rather than meeting
them squarely. Knowing when to tell a lie is almost as
complicated an art as composing a wholly successful opera;
you can't approach it without both talent and experience.
So we have the cadet system--again it comes back to
education--which makes young people defer to adult judgment
no matter how skillful they are. Put it this way: If you
are skillful, you can teach the left hand not to recognize
what the right hand does; but this involves cutting the two
hemispheres of the brain off from contact with each other.
Both hands, and both hemispheres, must know what is going
on, and participate in the act of judgment. If they don't,
the result is paralysis; Here, let me show you a trinket I
carry."

He went to the oversize locker and reached into his kit.
When he came back, he was carrying a teaspoon. Its bowl was
bent at right angles to its handle.

"This simple little thing is an instrument of torture,
invented in the nineteenth century," he said. "It is, believe
it or not, a right-handed teaspoon, impossible to use in
the left hand. It was designed to force left-handed children
to eat with their right hands."

"But why?" Sandbag said.

"Because left-handers are relatively rare, and their parents
wanted to make them conform," Langer said with disgust.
"Mostly, they didn't succeed in switching the kids over to
the right hand, although they tried very hard. But when
they did succeed, can you guess what happened to the
successes?"

"They turned out to be bad liars," Sandbag said, to Jack's
amazed delight.

"Almost, Jerry; in fact I'll give you full marks for that
one. But the actual outcome was worse. They turned out, in
pitiful fact, to be incurable stutterers."

It was at that moment, for the first time in his life, that
Jack saw the kind of concept which makes poetry differ from
all the other arts. It seemed to be a perfectly useless
sort of insight in his world of techniques and expedients;
yet it filled him with an odd sort of warmth which he
suspected he would cherish for many years to come. He tucked
it away in his head, for later examination.

"But Tim didn't think fast enough to deal with Sylvia on
that basis," Langer added, returning with almost a neck-snapping
logical turn to the center of the subject. "And she probably
knew him well enough to guess in advance that he wouldn't.
The question in my mind is, why didn't her father stop her?
A little earlier, he put on a great show of trying to."
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

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